When Mankind Ceased Heeding the Words of the Hebrew Prophets, It Invented Hypocrisy

The War on Israel Is Indeed Disproportionate

There is a Midrash (1) that describes what happened during the building of the Tower of Babel. God, and the 70 angels that surround the Throne of Glory, descended and confused the people’s speech, dividing them into 70 separate nations, each with its own language. He appointed a guardian angel, also known as a sar (prince), over each nation.

These princes symbolize the various national ideologies and the contributions they can make for the betterment of mankind. If the princes and their nations live up to their tasks, they will ascend the ladder toward God and be celebrated in the annals of history. But if they fail and turn into despots and dictatorships, using their power to further inflate their egos with deceits and delusions of imaginary omnipotence, they will fall.

It is then that these princes forget who they are and what their function is. They flaunt their arrogance, each one of them imagining he is the supreme master. But the hand of their Master subdues them.

This is what the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and many others learned on their way out of history.

And it is then that one nation begins to irritate them more than any other. It is the Jewish nation that enters their lands and disperses among them, causing great trouble with their moral demands and teachings. It is a peculiar people on a mission from heaven to teach the world that each human being is held responsible for his deeds; a people whose teachings oppose all the egotism, illusions and deceits that these countries have by now embraced.

As a result, these countries call for the destruction of this annoying nation. Its voice, reflecting the One Above, has to be silenced so that the uncertainty of these countries’ conscience and the reality of their guilt can be obliterated. Resisting their own destiny, they need to destroy those who remind them of that fate.

But how can they accomplish that goal and not feel guilty about it? There is only one way, and that is to delegitimize that nation by proving to the world that the Jews themselves are no better, and in fact are worse than those very nations that destroyed the moral foundations. Only if it can be proven that the Jews are as immoral and as guilty of massacre and genocide, can this voice of morality be silenced.

So they look for a Catch-22. But it is not easily found. How can they create an impossible situation in which the Jews will be trapped so that no matter how they respond they will be found guilty? They concluded that nothing could be more gratifying than forcing the Jews into a struggle with another people against whom they would have to defend themselves in order to survive.

But it could not be just another people; it had to be a perceived underdog, and conditions had to be created so that the Jews would have no choice but to take up their weapons, out of pure self-defense, and fight those so-called defenseless people. And if a defenseless people could not be found, well, then, it would have to be artificially created.

And so it was. And the world fell for this plan, hook, line, and sinker, and consequently lost its common sense and moral fiber.

In fact, it turned bizarre. With a few significant exceptions, the world population, governments, media, and the UN bureaucrats became inhabitants of an Orwellian universe. They stopped thinking, inverted victim and aggressor, and began to rewrite history with one goal in mind: to delegitimize biblical morality as carried through history by the Jews.

Today, thousands of rockets are indiscriminately fired at cities in Israel, every one of them designed to kill, or at least maim. Nearly two million people are forced to sit in shelters, their lives ruined, their economy destroyed, while a large part of the world – foremost the media –accuses this small nation of responding “disproportionately” to its enemy. They claim that Israel deliberately killed children in Gaza, when in fact the Israeli army warned citizens time after time – via leaflets, radio, and even phone messages! – to evacuate their homes so as not to be harmed.

The insane international outcry is that there is disproportion in this war. And indeed there is:

Hamas deliberately tries to create as many civilian casualties on both sides, while Israel deliberately tries to minimize civilian casualties on both sides.

Israel sends its ground troops into Gaza so as to prevent the loss of Palestinians lives, paying the heavy price of exposing its soldiers to mortal danger, while Hamas deliberately hides its fighters, rockets and entire infrastructure among Palestinian civilians to ensure that as many of its own people as possible get killed.

Israeli soldiers die so that Palestinian civilians will stay alive.

And the only thing the international community does is speak of Israel’s atrocities, some even comparing them to the Nazis in the Holocaust. This is anti-Semitism of the highest order.

This craziness, however, emanates from a deeper place. It is unrecognized and latent hatred against biblical moral values. What makes the Western world and its media turn against Israel in the blink of an eye, when it is simply trying to defend itself? And why does that same world remain silent when hundreds of thousands of Muslims are being killed and tortured by their own people in Syria, Iran and Iraq?

It the fault of one man: Jesus. The world is still unable to forgive the People of Israel for having given them this man and, through him, Christianity. It was Jesus who, deeply influenced by the moral tradition of Judaism, brought them a taste of Israel’s ethics, and it is against this morality that they rebel. It is the Jew Jesus whom they hate. They spit on the Jews not because the Jews are Jesus killers, but because they are Jesus givers. This is the root of much of Western anti-Semitism. A medieval poet once wrote, “To the eye of enmity virtue appears the ugliest blemish.”

As we Jews watch this bizarre play, we can only smile at the artificial game, which, paradoxically, once again proves the uniqueness of our people. The double standards, used only against the Jews; the total lack of integrity; and the complete absence of any logic no longer surprise us. It is part and parcel of the Jewish experience. Still, “The multitude of the sick shall not make us deny the existence of health.” (2)

After all, Olive Schreiner once wrote: “The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse.” (3)

It is time for the nations of the world to realize that if they deny Israel’s right to survive, they will set the stage for a Holocaust. This time, however, it will consume the gentiles. And not even their prince, or angel, will help them.

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About Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo is the Founder and Dean of the David Cardozo Academy and the Bet Midrash of Avraham Avinu in Jerusalem. A sought-after lecturer on the international stage for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, Rabbi Cardozo is the author of 13 books and numerous articles in both English and Hebrew. He heads a Think Tank focused on finding new Halachic and philosophical approaches to dealing with the crisis of religion and identity amongst Jews and the Jewish State of Israel. Hailing from the Netherlands, Rabbi Cardozo is known for his original and often fearlessly controversial insights into Judaism. His ideas are widely debated on an international level on social media, blogs, books and other forums.

Every week I receive hundreds of emails, as well as a host of important observations on my essays, via our website, Facebook, newspaper blogs, and other media outlets. It is therefore completely impossible for me to respond – for which I apologize – but please be assured that I read every comment, which I deeply appreciate and from which I learn so much. Only in exceptional cases will I respond in a subsequent essay. My office staff will try to be more prompt in posting these remarks on our website.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your comments with me, as well as with your fellow readers. I hope you will continue to do so.

Nathan Lopes Cardozo

Comments

That the nations hate the Jews for having given them the Jew Jesus is a very intriguing and profound thought. Perhaps that explains one particular quirk of anti-Semitism: the blood libel, which throughout history has focused on the Jews as murderers of children. Jesus, we should remember, has a dual nature (well, really triple, as the Trinity) as both a man and a child, so that when the Jews supposedly “killed” him, according to Christianity’s foundational myth, they were killing a child. And, from England’s Hugh of Lincoln to the modern blood libels (Rachel Corrie in England, a young girl often depicted as a child, or the Arabs’ Mohammed al-Dura) on through to today’s press coverage of Gaza, Jews are painted as child-killers. In fact, the motif of child sacrifice is very curious in Christian anti-Semitism, because in the Christian myth, God sacrifices his only son to atone for man’s sins, whereas in Akedat Yitchak, although God calls on Abraham to sacrifice his son, he then forbids it — and forbids the Hebrews to follow the practices of the pagan nations in sacrificing their children to Moloch. So perhaps Rabbi Cardozo is truly onto something — that what the Christians are really repudiating when they turn on the Jews is their Jewish conscience, embodied in Jesus, their sacrificed child.

I love the Rabbi’s essay. They are a highlight of my week, and his comments are always thoughtful and insightful. Then he begins this essay and I am reminded, whatever the veneer of intellectualism, that he is still a fundamentalist. The Tower of Babel story is precisely that: A story. More to the point, a myth, an allegory. The idea that the Boreh Olam and his 70 angels (a creepy alignment with Islam’s 70 virgins) founded the world’s languages is silly on its face. I read the rest of the piece out of respect. One should never confuse history and mythology. It is morally bankrupt.

I read very carefully your article, and I could not stop thinking about Israel and its role in the world during the last +2000 years, perhaps going to the time of Abraham.
I am a Christian, and I am familiar with the history of Israel, and the root cause of its sufferings. As you may know, God promised to Abraham and his followers that a seed will come from him. This seed is what Moses called as a Great Prophet, who will bring deliverance of His people. Now, who is the bitter enemy of God? Of course, Satan. From the very beginning, Satan wanted to destroy the work of God, knowing that some day, Messiah will come. Sadly, Israel did not receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah because they did not understand that this Messiah will deliver people from their sin, and give them again access to the God’s throne of grace. Killing Jesus is a done deal. Sadly, some so-called Christians, accused Israel of this act. As a result, these so-called Christians persecuted Jews all over the world, again because Satan was behind. As I repeat, these are “Christians” in name only, since the clear teaching of Jesus Christ was “who raise the sword, will die by the sword”. Jesus never told anybody to kill anybody else, since He came as a Man of Peace, Who wanted everyone to receive peace in their hearts. But, as Jeremiah prophet said “the heart of a man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked…” Today, Satan is behind this anti-Semitism, since he believes he can destroy God’s work. Who, in a normal mind, would be so anti-Israel, a country so small, with a tiny population comparing to its enemy? Humanly speaking, it does not make any sense! Israel, before 1948, was a barren country, mostly a desert area without anything to attract the envy of anybody, wasn’t it? It does not have riches in the soil, it does not have at least oil (now in 2012 they found something in the Mediterranean Sea!). So, you see my points. Now, according to the prophets, Israel will still go through the worst period of its existence, which will surpass the Holocaust. This will be until Israel will recognize that Jesus Christ was Messiah. Read prophet Zechariah. It is very sad, but there is no alternative because Israel will not admit Jesus was their Messiah until they will have no choice. I would like to re-emphasis that true Christians are the only ones who are supporting Israel because Israel is God’s chosen people, and we know that and we love what God loves.

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